St. Patrick's Day 2025

Hello friends, this is Dick Foth with stories from the road and it is a crisp almost spring morning when I say almost spring it's 28 degrees under Robin's egg blue sky here in northern Colorado but I'm seeing this podcast up it should be released on Monday, March 17th St. Patrick's Day and I just wanted to do a reprise from I think three years ago of juxtaposition of two stories which would be St. Patrick of Ireland and Jesus of Nazareth so here we go God bless have a great day angel sing top of the morning to you it's St. Patrick's Day friends March 17th 2022 I've never done that before I've always wanted to do that what a fun way to start this podcast stories to make sense of it all and because it's story time I'm gonna I'm gonna share two stories with you this morning and the first one you might expect I want to I want to tell you about the person they call St. Patrick of Ireland Patrick was born in Britain not and he's not an Irish guy he was born in Britain the Romans were in that territory at the time this is middle of the fifth century so you're talking 430 to 450 in there maybe a little earlier and when he was 16 years old he was captured by Irish raiders from the villa of his father Calpernia who was a deacon and a minor local official and he was carried into slavery in Ireland he spent six years there as a herdsman so he went from some privilege to being a herdsman during which time he turned to his faith there's no indication of what his faith was or at least little indication about his faith was prior to that time and he had a dream about a ship that that was going to be available when his escape was ready and finally he fled from his master and found passage to Britain there he actually was captured a second time for a brief time but then he was returned to his family apparently along the way he had a dream in which a person called Victoricus delivered him a letter headed the voice of the Irish as he read it in his dream he seemed to hear a certain company of Irish calling to him to walk once more among them and Patrick said deeply moved I could read no more well because he didn't feel educated enough he was reluctant for a long time to respond to the call and he still had doubts about his fitness for the task even before embarking on the boat to go back to Ireland but once in the field once he was there he had no hesitations and in his confidence in his trust in God he journeyed far and wide baptizing confirming with untiring zeal the writing say and in diplomatic fashion he brought gifts to a kinglet here and another person a law giver there but accepted no gifts from anybody on at least one occasion he was put in chains and numbers of folks were kidnapped or slain because of their faith that they came to so he he was careful to deal fairly with the Irish who who were non-Christian if you will but the fact is that his task was always a challenging one the writing say the phenomenal success of Patrick's mission is not the full measure of his personality since his writings have come to be better understood it says it's increasingly recognized that despite their occasional incoherence they mirror a truth and a simplicity of the rarest quality he was how shall I say it he was vulnerable in his writing a author is quoted as saying the moral and spiritual greatness of the man shines through every stumbling sentence of his quote rustic Latin in quote so we don't know exactly when he was born but it was in that time frame that I've already mentioned and he he spent his days in Ireland and toward the end of his life he felt like an angel visited him to convey when he was about to die and he did one of the legends about Patrick is that he used the shamrock to describe the Trinity showing the three lead plant with one stock and so traditionally Irishman have worn sham rocks the national flower of Ireland in their lapels on St. Patrick's Day March 17th today so across the country maybe around the world but for sure across this country St. Patrick's Day is often celebrated with large parades you go to New York Boston Chicago Savannah Georgia and I have a friend who grew up in Savannah and she said that St. Patrick's Day was a holiday in Savannah and I had never till that point connected Savannah Georgia with Ireland you don't have to be a Irish descent to appreciate the the fact that it gave people who came to this country their identity the first Irish immigrants to this country were not Irish Catholics they were Irish Protestants and then with potato famine about a million I think of Irish Catholics came and even though there was probably not a lot of love lost between these these two directions if I can use that or flavors of the Christian faith when it came to St. Patrick's Day I think pretty much many of them joined hands in that I have another connection with St. Patrick's Day and I was hesitant to say this but why not it was 80 years ago tonight that in Alameda California a young mother was in labor her name was Gwendolyn and it was my mom Gwendolyn Vance Footh and sometime in that evening I was born in a maternity ward or what they called a maternity home back in 1942 in Alameda California right next to Oakland across the bay from San Francisco so as I speak to you this day this is the first day of my 81st journey around the Sun I just finished my last one last last evening and the truth be told I feel it a little bit I got to tell you that if you do the the math on how many miles around the Sun I've gone in 80 it's billions but let's not get into that I used to look better than I do now I've slim had hair was amazing and now it's a good thing this is audio that's all I'm saying to you but I heard something the other day that in I'm Scotts Irish my mother was a boy Ruth's family the Blakelies are Scotts Irish so it's a little mixture there Irish have both a yen and a capacity for storytelling and in Frank Delaney's wonderful book Ireland the novel he says that Irish have been mixing truth and fancy and mysticism and fairy tales for years he puts it since God was a boy I really like stories I like hearing stories I like telling stories and I heard this thing the other David if an Irishman dies well telling a story he'll be back so I want to I want to share a story with you that is not myth it is not fancy it is in fact my favorite story some would say it's the greatest story ever told and it's it's written actually by a fellow who is supposed to be when he wrote it 80 something they're about so identify with it toward the end of the first century there was this fisherman who as probably as a teenager met Jesus of Nazareth his name was John he had a brother named James they were in a family commercial fishing business on an inland sea not far from the Mediterranean called the Sea of Galilee and this is how he tells the story in just a few lines relatively speaking of this Jesus of Nazareth and since this is my favorite story I want to start my 81st trip around the Sun by by reading it to you and then I I just want to come back and sort of unpack it a little bit I don't use unpack as a as a verb very often but I'm going there here we go in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God he was with God in the beginning and through him all things were made without him nothing was made that has been made in him was life and that life was the light of all mankind the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it there was a man sent from God whose name was John this is John the Baptist he came as a witness to testify concerning that light so that through him all might believe he himself was not the light he came only as a witness to the light the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world he was in the world and though the world was made through him the world did not recognize him he came to that which was his own but his own did not receive him he came to that which which his own but his own did not receive him yet to all who did receive him to those who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God children born not of natural descent or a human decision or a husband's will but born of God the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us we have seen his glory the glory of the one and only son who came from the father full of grace and truth so here's the deal here's how I see this the I'm not sure who the audience was exactly that that the old fisherman John was writing to but listen to his language this is not a simple statement in the beginning was the word if if you're a philosopher you're loving that world of ideas if you're a writer if you're into literature you're loving the fact that words are framed that he is in fact the ultimate word if you're concerned about intimacy in a disconnected world here is the person who is with God he is God through him we're all things made if you're going if you're an architect or a builder you're an artist you have to love this he's a producer he is a maker if you're an entrepreneur or a leader in industry or a kid with Lego or a chef or a quilter or a seamstress or any kind of product you get this part how about life in him was life if you're a biologist a neonatal nurse an archaeologist an astronaut a zoologist a personal trainer a nutritionist a police officer a doctor a nurse or a PA or an EMT or a fireman or a fisherman or a forester if you're a two-year-old or a ten-year-old or a hundred-year-old if you're two-year-old you're just getting started with life if you're ten-year-old it's like the most free you'll never be you can ride a bike you can go lots of places you can you've got energy coming out of your ears and you don't have the teenage stuff this way yet if you're a hundred years old you're toward the end but you still like life I believe that and this life was the light of all mankind if you're in science if you're in the communications industry if you're an art or a gardener or a rancher or a farmer or an ophthalmologist or you're in TV or radio or media or cell technology if you're big about satellite any of those things they all use light if you google the light spectrum and call it up you'll see on one end TV and radio and shortwave and all that stuff and then you have visible light in the middle you've got infrared UVA X-ray all those invisible kinds of light and you get to the far end and you have gamma knife technology on the one end you've got Dr. Phil on the other end you've got brain surgery do you think God knew when he said let there be light that that's what it was about if you're a rancher or a farmer you know the whole food chain depends on light nothing grows there is no life on this planet without light and then you get this guy John the Baptist who says he's not the light but he's coming to tell you about it if you're a PR guy or into content marketing or event planning or public speaking or you're a speech writer he's your guy if you're a critiquer of culture if you're going to write an op ed for the LA Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal or your favorite magazine if you're going to reflect on the Times John the Baptist your guy and then you get to this part where it said he came to his own he created all this came to his own and he got rejected and at that point in the story we say aha I identify with that whatever my role that's a human thing I think most of us listening to this podcast including the guy talking on it we know about rejection at some level where somebody says well you're not qualified or you're not good enough or you're not tall enough to be a great basketball player or you're too tall to be a fighter pilot okay or your background or your ethnicity or your location or your track record is a disqualifier he came to his own creation and his own people did not receive him so if if you're a therapist or a psychologist or you're walking people through stuff this part touches where you live but then it goes on to say yet to all who did receive him how did they receive him to all who believed in his name they get this they get authority become children of God believing big verb here this writer uses that action verb 98 times in just a few chapters because it for him it's not about systems it's not about belief it's about believing it's about trusting okay and what you or I believe about anything touches everything in our life I love what the old preacher of yesteryear said eight of you tozer what comes to mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you the some of us when we think about God we think about us I've been there I tried to do that found out I wasn't why why to be my oh god I don't have enough range I don't have enough insight or foresight or my hindsight is messed up whatever it is anyway when I believe I get authority it's a really interesting combination and I get authority to become a child what mean who who talks about putting authority rights or or capacity power and kids in the same sentence oh you might have a cartoon about power arrangers but the but the fact is that this juxtaposition of trust and and authority and being a child is a powerful thing how many times in my 80 years I thought oh to be a kid again not in terms of having to go through all the stuff but just in terms of energy or when you're a little kid everything is a first and I mean it's all discovery and we can go on and on and then it comes to the last part and that word Almighty God becomes flesh incarnations the word that used and he camps out with us there he is we've seen his glory full of grace and truth the two things we need in our lives are we need we need somebody to tell us the truth about life about us about what to expect it's been a big question the last two or three years hasn't it what's true I get asked that question more than any of the question what's true we need someone to tell us the truth and we need somebody to give us grace the person to give both of those to me and perhaps to you hopefully is this Jesus of Nazareth person who is the light of all mankind and this was a song that was sung back in those first hundred or two hundred years people would gather together and sing that song with all of these pieces the word and light and life and trusting all of that I think probably Patrick sang that song in some dimension in some way as he went through Ireland speaking truth bringing grace to the people of that place well that's my best story I can tell you a hundred other stories going forward they won't be better than that they won't be more current than that they won't be more energizing than that they won't bring you more hope than that do I do I sound like I'm preaching on my birthday that's absolutely what I'm doing so you're stuck with it and God bless great to be with you we'll catch you next time when I'm already on my 81st journey around the sun several days in catch you later bye bye you